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Thursday, 17 January 2013

The day after tomorrow and great expectations

There was a storm on Tuesday night that threatened to turn our solidly-built house completely inside out. I was huddled up so tightly, I expected at any minute to see the jacaranda tree walk hand-in-hand through the front door with the oleander in a kind of Arthur-Rackham-meets-Edward-Lear-type moment.

'Give us shelter,' they would plead, as I fought off an inexplicable urge to tidy up the house before letting them in. Well, I wouldn't want them gossiping to the palm tree. I wouldn't trust him an inch.

Rain poured through the end windows, drip-plop-torrent. The wind roared and whistled down the chimney in such a terrifying way that, for a split second, I turned to see the shadow of Mr Grigg and thought it was the convict Abel Magwitch from Great Expectations.

I shuddered.

And then the thunder cracked, splitting the sky in two after a great flash of light like an Olympian paparazzi ready to pounce on the world's greatest scoop.

It rained and rained and rained yesterday and then there was a tiny bit of sunshine. Almost enough blue to make a sailor a pair of trousers, albeit a very small one. But even a midget matelot would do for me.

For today, you see, we are bound for the UK, where Daughter Number One is due to have Baby Number Three. After the trauma of the last one, we've volunteered to do school runs and other duties, at least for a while.

Only the flight taking us to Athens from the green isle of Corfu (now we know why it is so green) is cancelled as we wait at the gate, because the visibility is so poor. Which means we will miss our connecting flight. Which means we have to make new plans.

So be it. Time for another coffee in the Agios Magikades kafenion perhaps, in between the showers.

So, think of us, with everything crossed, for a safe trip back to Dorset on Saturday, where friends and relatives say we will need snow shoes and chains on our tyres and a shovel in the boot to get back to Lush Places.

That's if the UK airports aren't at a standstill.

But, if Dennis Quaid can make it to New York across the frozen wastes in The Day After Tomorrow for the sake of his son, we can do anything, especially for Number One Daughter.

The storms are less than magical Hilary! Two autumns ago we had the whole of the annual rainfall in one night and the damage done by landslides was immense. Not only were roads washed away, but also houses. My own neighbours were trapped in their house for two days as a landslide had blocked their gates. The thunderstorms shake our houses and the lightning can be very frightening and damage electrical goods. I have lost three modems and a large American-style fridge freezer because of lightning strikes. The lightning is so violent that lightning conductors are not recommended as they actually attract the strikes. Last week a friend of mine, in the middle of the island saw a lightning strike inside her house - fortunately she was at the other end of the room, but it, yet again, took out her tv and computer even though she uses powerful surge protectors. We are very lucky to live on such a beautifully verdant island, but summer visitors have no idea of what we endure in the winter!

Anonymous - maybe bad magic then. As you say, summer visitors have no inkling of what winter is like here. Sadly, back in Dorset in the summer we had three deaths from landslides following persistent rain. One on our lovely Jurassic coast and two just a few miles from our UK home when a road tunnel collapsed. Nature is terrifying, all over the world.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was a child in a meadow with a woodland circle of beech trees around me. And there was clover growing i...

The World from My Window

Stories from Corfu and Dorset

'Other countries may offer you discoveries in manners or lore or landscape; Greece offers you something harder - the discovery of yourself.'

So said Lawrence Durrell in the book, Prospero's Cell. In October 2012, I exchanged my life in the Dorset village of Lush Places, in the heart of England's rural underbelly, for twelve months in a village in north Corfu which I call Agios Magikades.

But a year was not enough. And now, in fits and starts, I'm back, with a foot in both countries.

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